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And in the end...

Started by Tamas, March 09, 2012, 08:15:14 AM

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Tamas

Good blogpost, good to mark what is essentially the day of Greek default

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/03/09/and-in-the-end/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Quoteand in the end...

after three years...

and after 1,673,076 articles...

and 958,004 blog posts...

and 897,066 television segments...

and 788,545 radio commentaries...

all attempting to answer the question of "will Greece default"....

it actually kind of did.

only they didn't call it a default, they called it a negotiated restructuring.

and the next morning, everyone got up in the morning and packed their kids' lunches and put them on the school bus.

they went to work and to the gym and to the diner and they dropped off their dry cleaning and picked up Taylor from karate.

the Dow Jones went on Dow Jonesing and the news anchors continued to news anchor.

and the creditors got the haircut they've all known very well was coming.

and the only people who were punished and surprised were those who'd wasted so many of their precious seconds and minutes and hours and days obsessing over something that was obvious from the start and essentially inconsequential.

the mail is going to come today, just as it did the day before.

and at lunchtime, Chipotle will be regurgitating processed faux-Mexican food into millions of American mouths like a mama bird freshly returned to her nested hatchlings.

and tonight we'll vote on amateur singers warbling old songs we already have an affinity for.

we'll turn off the lights, possibly have sex, or perhaps we'll simply be too tired from the meetings and the calls and the errands and all the food and fluorescent lighting.

as though all that time spent worrying about and talking about Greek default can ever be given back to us - as though we didn't allow it to slip away.

we cannot have that time back, but we can promise ourselves not to waste any more time on the next crisis to come, we don't have to pay attention to it past understanding the basic facts, we don't have to be consumed by it or let it take over a significant part of our lives.

because there is always a "Greek default" about to happen, always a new crisis on the horizon.

the key is understanding that life will continue much as it had before...quickly.


Martinus

Calling an agreed debt restructuring a "default" is like calling a parachute jump "free fall". Sure, you are moving in the same direction and, broadly speaking, the circumstances are similar but the end result is completely different. ;)

Tamas

Quote from: Martinus on March 09, 2012, 09:26:13 AM
Calling an agreed debt restructuring a "default" is like calling a parachute jump "free fall". Sure, you are moving in the same direction and, broadly speaking, the circumstances are similar but the end result is completely different. ;)

calling this deal "restructuring" is also kind of incorrect though. The debtors will never see most of their invested money.

DGuller

Quote from: Martinus on March 09, 2012, 09:26:13 AM
Calling an agreed debt restructuring a "default" is like calling a parachute jump "free fall". Sure, you are moving in the same direction and, broadly speaking, the circumstances are similar but the end result is completely different. ;)
Actually, that's more like calling jumping off the balcony as a free fall.

The Brain

Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Solmyr


MadImmortalMan

Marty should stop attempting analogies.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

Razgovory

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 09, 2012, 01:22:47 PM
Marty should stop attempting analogies.

Those are his best ones.  Imagine the ones he comes up with and doesn't use.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Jacob

Quote from: Razgovory on March 09, 2012, 07:43:43 PM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 09, 2012, 01:22:47 PM
Marty should stop attempting analogies.

Those are his best ones.  Imagine the ones he comes up with and doesn't use.

It's like he buys all these apples at the store, but then he makes chicken-pot pie instead and we're all vegetarians!

Ed Anger

I thought Tamas was doing Linkin Park lyrics.
Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

fhdz

I thought he was going to say "the love you take is equal to the love you make".
and the horse you rode in on

PDH

Quote from: fahdiz on March 09, 2012, 08:01:31 PM
I thought he was going to say "the love you take is equal to the love you make".

He did, in beet-talk.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-Umberto Eco

-------
"I'm pretty sure my level of depression has nothing to do with how much of a fucking asshole you are."

-CdM

Ed Anger

Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive


PDH

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-Umberto Eco

-------
"I'm pretty sure my level of depression has nothing to do with how much of a fucking asshole you are."

-CdM